


The Ring

by Literal_Sunshine



Category: Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard - Rick Riordan
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Kind of? But not really a "proposal" per se, Magnus Chase is a Simp, Marriage Proposal, POV First Person, She/Her Pronouns For Alex Fierro
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-07
Updated: 2021-02-07
Packaged: 2021-03-13 00:33:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29269548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Literal_Sunshine/pseuds/Literal_Sunshine
Summary: "'It’s kind of funny that it’s a ring, because… well, it really is quite the circle it’s gone on, isn’t it? My mother got it from my grandmother because my grandmother loved her. And now I’m giving it to you because I love you.'"It has been tweleve years, to the day, since Alex and Magnus kissed for the first time. To commemorate the event, Magnus tracks down his mother's ring, which was bought at an estate sale over a decade ago.
Relationships: Magnus Chase & Alex Fierro, Magnus Chase/Alex Fierro
Comments: 8
Kudos: 41





	The Ring

**Author's Note:**

> Hey! So this was a pretty quick write; I made it in maybe two days or so. It's also pretty short in comparison to some of my other works, but I didn't see the point in trying to drag it out too far. I got the concept idea and felt compelled to put it to paper. Maybe I'll rewrite it in a few months or a few years. I'm not super thrilled with how it turned out, but it's short and sweet and punchy.  
> This is also my first time putting something out for Fierrochase! I've written for the Riordanverse before, but I only recently read MCGA so I'm hoping I have a firm enough grasp on the characters. Sorry if it's a little OOC :( Also, I usually dislike writing 1st person fan fiction, but it felt appropriate here for some reason? Sorry if it's a pet-peeve of yours  
> With all that said, enjoy!

I pulled up outside of the big house with very little idea of what I was supposed to say. How was I supposed to go about this? _Oh, hey, ma’am, you bought my dead mother’s ring in an estate sale about twelve years ago and now I want it back._

I’d managed to call in some favors from the state attorney’s office and got the papers for the estate sale. The name was listed with an address: Cordelia Byers in Salem, Massachusetts. I hoped she hadn’t moved in the last decade. 

Part of me was convinced the most painless way to get the ring was to break into the house, find it, take it, and run away, hoping the plates of my rental car hadn’t been recognized. Snatch it and get out. I’d broken into houses before; it wasn’t like it was a new thing for me. But my morality nagged at me. Cordelia Byers had paid $3,000 for a ring that was probably only worth $1,000. The very sale had been a burglary in itself. 

Besides, looking at the house, I was guessing Ms. Byers was no schlub when it came to home security. The house was a shade of light blue that would have made any filth apparent if it was dirty at all. The walkway was paved with new cement, with no cracks or discoloration. Lilac bushes rested neatly trimmed along the front of the house under the big windows, their bushels in full bloom in the late May afternoon. The ornamental detailing on the house reminded me of the late 19th century houses built on the west coast by those lucky few who struck gold, with pretty and pristinely white spiral beams holding up the ceiling of the porch. Under the porch was a lattice, also painted white, where ivy grew. The house was begging to be stolen from so much, I couldn’t imagine thievery would be made easy. They probably had hidden cameras in the flower planters.

So I resigned myself to doing the embarrassing but nice thing. I got out of the car, the $3,000 in cash I’d saved up for this very occasion crammed into my back pocket, and I approached the front door. 

The door itself was painted blue, a darker shade than the rest of the house. Next to the frame was one of those high-tech doorbells— the ones with the lit-up blue ring on a black circular button. With a click glance to the right, I realized that I’d made the right decision; a surveillance camera was trained straight on me. I rang the doorbell.

After a few seconds and some noise from inside, the door flung open. Standing on the other side was a pretty girl who looked about as old as I did— which is to say, maybe 16. Her hair was long and dark brown, falling across her bare shoulders. She wore a light pink halter top, which went well with her tan skin tone (I couldn’t tell if she was Hispanic or just regularly went to the tanning salon), and blue daisy-dukes. She was chewing on the edge of a stick that I assumed used to be a lollipop and smiling— though the last part of that changed when she saw who I was.

“You’re not James,” she said.

“No, I’m not,” I agreed.

She crossed her arms and regained her grin. “Are you one of his friends? Did he send one of his friends to mess with me?”

“Uh, no,” I said. “I don’t know anyone named James.”

“Yeah, okay,” she said, clearly not taking me seriously. “Just tell him that I seriously need to see him. Our project is due tomorrow. He said he’d be here at three.”

Last I’d checked in the car, it was 3:04. I kinda felt bad for this girl; James might be blowing her off. Or maybe he was just stuck in traffic. As I had just discovered, the drive from Boston to Salem can get awfully slow. “Is there a Cordelia Byers there?”

The girl’s smile faltered. “That’s my mom. Why?”

“Uh…” I fiddled with the pendant around my neck. Jack buzzed in protest, but luckily, the girl didn’t seem to notice. “I need to talk to her. It’s kind of complicated.”

She looked suspicious, but called over her shoulder, “Mom! Some guy says he needs to talk to you!” Then she faced me. “What’s your name?”

“Magnus,” I said, seeing no reason to lie. “But she doesn’t know me.”

From the hall behind the girl emerged a middle-aged white woman, beautiful as her daughter. She wore a cardigan over mom jeans and a flowy blouse. Her blonde hair was pulled back into a ponytail.

“Hi,” she said. “Is there something I can do for you?”

“Yes,” I replied. “Um, there’s a ring you bought a while ago. At an estate sale. My mother’s estate sale. Uh, what I mean to say is—”

“Do you want to come in?” she asked. 

I blinked, then nodded. “That’d be great, ma’am.”

The girl in the pink halter top opened the door wider to let me inside. The house was new, one of those cookie-cutter types made in the 1990s. Just inside the main entrance was a staircase leading up to a balcony, which overlooked the grand foyer I stood in. Ms. Byers led me into the hallway she’d emerged from and brought me to a living room with a leather couch and a loveseat to match, a big-screen television, and minimalist decorations. On the glass coffee table there was a metal sculpture of a surrealist man, with arms and legs in a U-shape and a faceless ovular head. Alex would have _hated_ it, I thought to myself. I tried to imagine her voice: _There’s no passion, no conviction. It’s boring, don’t you think?_

I decided not to comment on what I thought of the decorations.

“So,” Ms. Byers said, sitting down on the leather loveseat. “What’s your name?”

“Magnus Chase,” I told her. “And… you’re Cordelia Byers? Can I call you Ms. Byers?”

“ _Doctor_ Byers,” she corrected. “I go to lots of estate sales. I like buying pretty things. When was your mother’s estate sale?”

I shifted in my seat. “It was about 12 years ago.”

“Yeah?” She inclined her head. I felt like I was being evaluated, like I was a potentially precious metal. “You must have been… what, eight years old? Ten?”

I was constantly amazed by how old people thought I looked. Though I was technically 28, my body was forever 16. Her guessing I was 22 was kind of a compliment. Then again, people had always thought I was older than I truly was, even when I was alive. I’d managed to buy beer once when I was fifteen without an ID. 

“Something like that,” I lied. “My mom’s name was Natalie Chase. She died in an explosion. Most of our belongings got blown up.”

“Usually, possessions go to the next of kin,” Dr. Byers pointed out. “But… you didn’t inherit anything?”

I shrugged. “Lots of legal problems. For a while, police suspected me of arson.”

She looked horrified. “But… you were a kid, weren’t you?”

“Yeah, it was weird,” I agreed. “I was scared. I ran away. They stopped looking for me after a while and held the estate sale.”

“Oh.” She scrunched up her nose in distaste. It reminded me a little bit of the goddess Sif. “That’s awful.”

I shook my head. “I’ve moved past that. I’m good now. I have a good supportive network. And I’m dating the best person on earth.”

A smile played on Dr. Byers’ lips. “That’s why you want the ring, isn’t it?”

I nodded.

She sat back in her chair. “How long have the two of you been together?”

“We’ve been dating since we were 16,” I told her. It was true; chronologically, Alex and I had both been sixteen when we started dating, and since we were both forever 16, it was physically true, too. 

“Four years? Six years?”

“Six years,” I decided, though it had really been twelve. “I know, I’m older than I look, but… yeah. I really love her.”

“So you’re going to propose.”

I touched the back of my neck. “‘Propose’ isn’t the right word. I don’t think she’ll ever want to get married. She was born out of wedlock herself, and neither of her parents’ marriages really gave her something to look forward to. Abuse, affairs, all kinds of fun things.”

Dr. Byers nodded sagely. “I understand. I’m a child of divorce myself. It was a bad break-up when I was eleven.”

“I’m sorry to hear,” I told her.

“It’s fine.” She looked at the little metal man on the coffee table a little wistfully. I wondered how her relationship with her daughter's father was. “But you love her, huh?”

I thought about Alex— the curve of her lips when she smiled, the way her amber eye looked like honey in the sun and the brown one looked like dirt on a hiking trail, how she loved taking in knowledge and reading for the sake of reading, the energy and strength she carried herself with. “Yes,” I told Dr. Byers. “More than I thought was possible.”

She smiled. “That’s good. I wish—” She faltered. “Well. What’s the occasion?”

“We kind of faded into a relationship, so we don’t have an official anniversary. But today is the anniversary of the first time she kissed me,” I said. 

“What was it like?”

“Stunning. Shocking. I wasn’t expecting it at all.” I cleared my throat. “We… we had been friends for months at that point, but I didn’t know she liked me.”

“That’s so sweet.” She tapped her manicured fingers on her knee. “So, if you’re not proposing, what are you doing with the ring?”

It was hard to put into words, but I tried my best. Dr. Byers seemed to understand.

“So,” she said, standing up from her chair. “How about we get that ring, then?”

She led me back down the hallway and brought me up the stairs. On the wall, there were photos, all of three girls. One of them was the one I saw earlier in the pink. I noted a conspicous lack of a man— the girls' father wasn't in any of the pictures.

“My daughters,” Dr. Byers told me. “Chloe, Lupina, and the youngest, who you met earlier, Yessica. I have a step-son, too, but we don’t get along. I haven’t heard from him in… well, a over a decade now.”

I nodded. “I can understand family not getting along. My uncle didn’t even know my mom was dead for two years.”

Dr. Byers winced. “I liked to think that if my son died, I’d at least know about it.” She paused for a second. “I have some regrets. I should have been kinder to him. I wish I knew where I could find him so I could… apologize.”

She said _apologize_ the same way I said _my mother_ — like she was mourning. I decided the best thing to say was nothing at all. When we got to the top of the stairs, she took me into the master bedroom. It was large, with a king sized bed in the middle of the far wall. Above the bed was a minimalist painting— some weird dribbles of paint on a white canvas. Across from the bed was a black dresser. Atop the dresser were a couple of jewelry boxes. Dr. Byers reached for one of them and flipped open the top.

“Tell me, what does the ring look like?”

“It, uh,” I started, “it’s silver. It has an emerald and these bits like leaves crafted out of the band.”

Dr. Byers hummed and pursed her lips, looking over the selection of rings. After a second of searching, she made an “Ah-ha!” noise and plucked out one.

“Is this it?” she asked. She showed me a ring just like I’d described, with vine detailing and a circular-cut emerald.

“That’s the one,” I confirmed.

“How did she get it?” Dr. Byers examined the ring. “Your mom, I mean. I’m just curious.”

“Family heirloom,” I told her. “She got it from my grandmother.”

“Was your mother married?”

“No. I don’t think she believed in marriage either.”

Dr. Byers looked at me the same way she had been looking at the ring. “Do you believe in marriage, Magnus?”

I shifted uncomfortably. “I think I do. I don’t know. I believe in love, that’s for sure.”

“Does your girlfriend not believe in love?” she asked.

I decided not to correct the term _girlfriend._ “I sure hope she does. She tells me she loves me.”

“What, you don’t believe her?”

I smiled. “It’s not that. But it’s hard not to be insecure when you’re with someone so beautiful, right? She’s so out of my league. She could have anybody she wants.”

She twisted the ring in her fingers. “My husband… he’s a good man. But I know how you feel. He could have anyone. He’s made that clear.”

There was an edge in her voice, a hint of bitterness. I realized that her husband must have had an affair, or something similar. You don’t talk about someone using that tone unless they’ve really, truly hurt you before. 

“But I don’t know,” Dr. Byers said. “You seem like a fine young gentleman. Don’t sell yourself too short.”

That was nice to hear. I imagined Dr. Byers was a good mother.

She handed me the ring. It was cool in my hand. 

I felt like crying. After all this time, my mother’s ring. And I was going to give it to the love of my life— of my _eternity—_ tonight. After all this time, this time… If Alex didn’t believe love was real, I would prove its existence to her. Tonight. All this time.

I clasped the ring in my hand and held my fist against my forehead, like I might absorb all of the knowledge and love of the generations of my family past. “Thank you,” I said, my voice quiet.

When I looked, Dr. Byers was smiling a little.

I slipped the ring into the breast pocket of my denim jacket for safekeeping, then went fumbling in my back pocket. “How much do you want for it?”

“I— what?” Dr. Byers looked stunned.

“I know you paid $3,000 for it at the original sale,” I told her. “I have $3,000 here. If— if you want more, I can get more; I just—”

“Magnus, Magnus,” she said, placing a hand on my shoulder. “You don’t need to pay me for it.”

I blinked. “Are you serious?”

She nodded. “I’m not going to accept a penny. You take that ring. It’s yours.”

I blinked again, this time to get the tears out of my eyes. “Are you sure?”

“Of course.” She looked at the ring on my finger. “I hardly wear it anyway. It’s… not my style.”

She said _not my style_ in a kind of rude way, but I decided it wasn’t worth arguing about. “Thank you. Oh, Jesus Christ, thank you so much.”

“It’s no trouble, kiddo,” she said. “But you have to promise to call me and let me know how it went.” 

She reached into her pocket and produced a business card: **DR. CORDELIA BYERS, M.D. Pediatric Services** with a phone number listed underneath.

“Call when you can,” she told me. “I like you. I’d like to keep in contact with you.”

I smiled. “That sounds great, Dr. Byers.”

She guided me downstairs. I felt like I was walking on air. I was giving my mother’s ring to Alex Fierro tonight. _Alex Fierro._ I’d managed to get the most gorgeous person I’d ever met.

I was just about to go when the girl from earlier, Yessica, called from the other room. “Mom! Is that kid from earlier still here?”

“Yes, why?” Dr. Byers replied.

Yessica appeared at the end of the hall. She looked at me. “Are you any good with plant cell structures? I’m in AP biology and I need help with this project.”

I wanted to tell her I knew absolutely nothing about it, but since, I was working on my pre-med (I took online classes to get a high school diploma and then I’d started working on my bachelor’s about two years ago) and since her mother had just done me such a huge favor, I felt it would be bad of me to lie.

Dr. Byers told her daughter it was fine, but that she needed the kitchen clear in a few minutes so she could start on dinner (“You know how your father gets when he comes home and there’s nothing on the stove.”)

I strolled down the hall and entered a kitchen with an island in the center, where Yessica had set up a shoe-box diorama of a plant cell. “James never showed?”

Yessica pouted. “He has football practice and forgot to tell me.”

I gave her a look. “You like him?”

“What’s it to you?”

“Nothing,” I told her. “So you _do_ like him. Got it.”

The way her face turned red reminded me of Alex whenever I was a little too sappy. “Look, can you help me or not?”

I helped her place the organelles. 

She leaned against the marble island. “So. What’s the ring for?”

I reached for the hot glue gun. “I’m giving it to my significant other.”

“Like, a promise ring?” she asked.

“Kind of,” I told her. “Why? You have a promise ring with James?”

She got redder yet. “Who asked you?”

I laughed. “Your name is Yessica, right? Your mom introduced me to the pictures by the stairs.”

“That’s right. Too bad you’re dating somebody; my sister Lupina would like you. She’s twenty-one.” She looked at me. “How old are you? Eighteen? Nineteen?”

“I’ve got one of those timeless faces, huh?” I held the golgi complex in place to let the hot glue dry. “No, uh, I’m twenty four, actually.”

“Oh.” Yessica blinked. “Maybe Chloe would like you, then. She’s 25— my dad’s second oldest.”

“Right,” I said. “You have a half-brother, then?”

Yessica huffed. “Some half-brother. More like an eighth of a brother. He left when I was two.”

“That must have been difficult,” I said, trying to sound sympathetic.

She shrugged. “Yeah, well, again, I was a toddler. It hit harder for my sisters, who actually knew him. Or… thought they did.”

“You sound bitter,” I noted.

She stared at the diorama on the table. “My sisters say he was nice, until he wasn’t. Like he snapped. Got sick of the abuse and being reminded he was a bastard and left without saying goodbye.”

“I’m sorry,” I said sincerely.

I wondered what might have happened if Yessica’s brother had stayed around. Maybe he’d be making this diorama with her, sitting at the kitchen island. Maybe he’d console her after James blew her off. I found the protective part of me— that nagging feeling I can never get rid of that I have to take care of those around me— wanted to fill that space, to be the older brother she didn’t have.

 _On Frigg, Magnus,_ I thought to myself. _You’ve only known her a few minutes._

“Sorry for dumping that out on you. That was rude of me. Too much information,” she said. 

“It’s fine,” I told her. “I run a homeless youth shelter in Boston. I’m used to messed-up family situations.”

She smiled at me. “Could you put the cytoplasm in place? I really want an A on this.”

It took maybe another thirty minutes before we were done. I assured Yessica that she’d do great on the presentation of the diorama and she decided to walk me out. 

When we passed the living room door, Dr. Byers, who had been reading inside, hopped out of her chair. “You’re leaving?”

“Yep,” I told her. 

She walked out of the room and met me in the foyer. “You should keep in contact, Magnus. I’d love to talk to you some more.”

Yessica looked at me with big brown eyes. “Do you offer tutoring services?”

“Uh, no,” I said. “But I’d be happy to help whenever. I’d give you my number, but I don’t have a cell phone.”

Yessica scrunched up her nose. She looked a lot like her mother, now that I was looking. “How do you manage causal life without a cell phone? Don’t you get bored?”

I thought about my everyday life. I had a busy schedule: Breakfast, being murdered in grand combat, going to Chase Space, hanging out with the kids at Chase Space, going back to the Hotel, getting murdered again, dinner in the Dining Hall, and chilling in my room with Alex. I answered honestly: “Nope. I never get bored.”

Dr. Byers hit Yessica’s shoulder. “See? Cut your screen time.”

Yessica rolled her eyes. “How about for work?”

“If people need me, they call my significant other,” I told her. “I’d give you her number, but I’m pretty sure she’d literally kill me if she found out I was giving her number to strangers.”

Just as I finished talking, keys rattled in the front door. 

“Ah,” Dr. Byers said, with no trace of enthusiasm in her voice. “That’d be my husband.” 

The door swung open to reveal a man— short but pretty, wearing a polo shirt.

Have you ever seen _Eden Lake?_ It’s this horror movie from a while back. _Eden Lake_ features a husband and wife on a getaway in a picturesque village when they’re attacked by these teenage terrorists hellbent on killing them. Spoiler alert: at the end of _Eden Lake,_ the wife manages to get help from a local older couple only to realize in a devastating scene that the couple are the parents of one of the kids who killed her husband, and now, the parents will kill her to keep her quiet. 

This was _exactly_ like that, like the ending of _Eden Lake._ All of a sudden, the pieces clicked together in my head. 

“Hey, Cordelia,” the man said to his wife. 

“You’re a doctor,” I said to Dr. Byers, not taking my eyes off the man. “You practice with your maiden name.”

Dr. Byers blinked at me. “Well, yes. Why?”

“Do you know my dad?” Yessica asked. 

Part of my brain was in shock. I was processing. An eldest step-son who left 14 years ago, in none of the pictures. Dr. Byers’s unhappy marriage. The way the whole place smelled like wealth.

I remembered what I’d thought when I saw the metal figure on the coffee table: _Alex would hate this place._

The man shook his head and stuck out his hand, the same sparkle in his eyes that I loved to see in his eldest child. “I don’t think we’ve met. I’m Martin Fierro.”

I stepped back, staring at his hand. “I know who you are.”

His smile faltered. “But… I’ve never met you.”

“No, you haven’t,” I agreed. I took a deep breath and looked at Dr. Byers. “Thank you for the ring. She’s going to love it.”

I stepped around Martin Fierro— the man who scraped apart the person I loved most in all the world and abandoned her to try to put herself back together alone— and went back to the rental I’d parked on the curb.

* * *

“What’s all this about?” Alex’s two-toned eyes shone in the candlelight, a light smile on her lips.

“What, can’t I give my S.O. a nice night?” I took her by the hand and pulled her towards the lawn chairs. 

She plopped down in one of them, pulling her pink jean jacket tight around her torso. The night was chilly, but not nearly as chilly as it had been in Niflheim twelve years ago today. I didn’t need to be nose-to-nose with her to keep her warm; that could be accomplished by holding her hand.

The candles, I decided, were overkill. It had taken almost a full 30 minutes to set up all of them on the roof deck of my family mansion, another ten trying to light all of them, and another ten to convince Hearthstone to A) keep everyone else off of the deck, and B) enchant the candles so they would stay lit. The cooking had also taken a while on the barbeque. Luckily, of all of my friends, I’m probably the best at cooking. If I had entrusted the task to Mallory or Halfborn or Blitz, I’d have two ruined filets mignons and a lot of wasted shrimp cocktail. 

Alex shifted in her seat. “It’s just the two of us and I still feel underdressed.”

“I told you to wear something nice,” I reminded her. “You told me to blow off, that you’d wear what you want.”

Alex smiled. “That, I did.”

“You still look great,” I said, sitting down in my own lawn chair. “But you always look great, so I don’t know what I expected.”

Alex flicked her fingers over the candles on the table between us. “These candles… it’s so gaudy. So extra and sappy.”

“You love it,” I said.

“I love it,” she confirmed. “Twelve years. Isn’t that weird?”

“Yeah, I feel like we’re still sixteen.”

“Bad joke.”

“I know.”

She looked so perfect. I wondered how her family had ever let her walk away.

“You know, there’s some things I don’t know about you,” I said. “There’s things you’ve never told me.”

“Oh, yeah?” Alex’s smile was shining. “What about my lore have I not told you?”

I cleared my throat. “Well, you never told me your step-mom kept her maiden name.”

Alex’s grin seemed to drip away like water coming out of a faucet. “How did you know that?”

“It was an accident,” I told her. “I didn’t seek her out on purpose. I didn’t even realize who she was until your dad got home.”

Alex pulled away a little bit. Her expression was one of concern. I appreciated that; if I had said something like this earlier in the relationship, she probably would have gotten angry. “What happened? How did you meet her?”

“I was trying to find something,” I said earnestly. “I tracked it down to Cordelia Byers. There was an address, so I went there earlier today. Got a rental car and took it there. They moved since you lived there, so I didn’t even recognize the house.”

Alex shook her head. “My _gods,_ Magnus. Are you okay? You didn’t… you didn’t do anything you’ll regret, did you?”

“No, no, of course not.” I reached out for her hands. “I realized where I was just when I was leaving. I got what I was looking for.”

“Okay,” she said, her voice struggling to remain even. “And what were you looking for?”

“I’m getting there,” I told her. “You all right?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Yeah, I’m fine. Did they… like, talk about me?”

“Not by name.” I gave her a smile. “But I think Yessica misses you.”

“My god,” she said quietly, shaking her head. Her black curls bounced around her face. For the last two years, she’d been growing her hair out her natural color. It made her look a little more like her sister. “How old is she now? Sixteen? Oh, gods.”

“She forced me to help her with her AP biology project.”

Alex let out a tense laugh. “Is she okay?”

“Yeah, she’s a good kid,” I said softly.

“Damn,” Alex said. “I can’t believe this. You accidentally met my family.”

“I still haven’t met two of your sisters,” I pointed out.

Alex got a gleam in her eyes. “I should reach out to them, shouldn’t I?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know, Alex. But I know Yessica wishes she got the chance to know you. And that your step-mom wants to apologize.”

She looked off in the distance, toward the Boston skyline. “Okay. Okay, I’ll reach out. She _said_ she wants to apologize?”

I nodded.

“Huh,” Alex said. “So… what did you go to the Byers-Fierro household for?”

I smiled, grasped her hand with my left hand, reached into my pocket with my right, and pulled out my mother’s emerald ring.

Alex looked stunned. Her arched eyebrows seemed to touch her hairline. Her lips were parted a little— just enough, I thought, for me to put my thumb on them.

“It was my mother’s,” I told her. “And her mother’s before her. Cordelia Byers bought it in an estate sale twelve years ago.”

“My gods,” she said quietly. 

“I think it’s crazy,” I continued, “that something tied our families together like that. That’s _fate._ This was _intended._ I don’t believe in God, and I know you don’t either, but something happened here, something that would make the two of us unremovable from each other. I was meant to meet your family, to take what once was my mother’s and reclaim it from your step-mother. It’s kind of funny that it’s a ring, because… well, it really is quite the circle it’s gone on, isn’t it? From my family to yours, to me, to you. My mother got it from my grandmother because my grandmother loved her. And now I’m giving it to you because I love you.”

Alex nodded. She was still staring at the ring.

“I’m not asking you to marry me,” I clarified. “I know that’s not something you want. You like things to be loose, to be fluid. You’ve been loyal this far, but I can’t expect you to want me for the rest of eternity. That would be unfair of me.”

Her eyes had shifted to me. She looked like she was pleading. I wasn’t used to that face on Alex.

“But I promise it’s not cursed. It won’t turn you into a dragon. I want you to wear this, for however long you’re mine. How does that sound?”

Alex took the ring out of my hand. She examined it— almost like how Cordelia had, but with more _awe_ on her face. And she placed it on her ring finger.

“Magnus Chase,” she said, her voice shaking, “what I have with you is the one thing I want to be solid— hard as rock.”

She held up her left hand in front of her face. The emerald glistened in the candlelight.

“And I, for one,” she started, her face breaking into a wide grin, “am particularly fond of _this_ rock.”

I laughed.

She reached out and touched my face. The silver band was cool on my cheek. “I love you so much.”

I placed a hand over hers on my face. “I love you, too.”

She leaned over and kissed me. I remembered the first time she’d done that— twelve years ago today. It felt just as magical as it did then, if not moreso. Like a fine wine, her touch just got better as we aged and matured. 

Back a dozen years ago, she’d told me she wasn’t going to to die without kissing me first. Now, she told me, “I hope I never lose you. Ever.”

I kissed her nose. She went cross-eyed looking at my lips, the amber and brown of her eyes pulling towards the center of her face. Then I pulled back.

Alex looked around. “You really went ham on the decor. What a loser.”

“Hey, I like to think that it helped influence your decision.”

She licked her fingers and pinched the wick of one of the candles between us, snuffing it out. “Meh. Now, if you had gotten wine…”

“Wine would have impaired your judgement,” I said.

She gave me a look and I realized that that was her joke. Then she looked away, up at the sky.

“You know what I don’t understand?” she asked. “I don’t get why you thought I wouldn’t want to get married.”

I blinked. “I mean… I just _guessed_ that, since you—”

She put up a hand to silence me. “It’s a weird situation, that’s for sure. But I really do hope I’ll spend eternity with you, Magnus.”

Her words filled me with more warmth and vigor than alcohol ever could. “I remember when we started dating, you’d never say something like that to me.”

She shrugged. “Eh. It’s been twelve years. I’ve spent about ten of those years coming to terms with just how much you mean to me.”

“You still tease me,” I said.

She gave me a devilish grin. “Of course I do. Bullying you is my favorite hobby.” She paused. _“Second_ favorite hobby.”

“Really?” I asked. “What’s the first?”

Alex eyed the door to the roof deck. “The door’s locked? The kids can’t get up here?”

“That’s right,” I confirmed.

She stood up and took a step, then sat down in my lap, facing me. Her hands ran through my hair. “Then how about I show you exactly what my favorite hobby is?”

“Wait, I’m confused now,” I said. “Do you want to get married? I’ll marry you if you want to get married.”

She kissed me. “Oh, Magnus. There’s things you’ll _never_ know about me.”

**Author's Note:**

> Be honest— was the twist obvious? I don't mind if it was heavy-handed as long as it was effective lol. I wanted to tag the fic something like "Meet the family" but I didn't want to give anything away.  
> Other things that aren't important but you guys might want to know: a) YES I named "James" after a Taylor Swift character. Let it be known to all the world that I am a huge Swiftie. It was just the first name I thought of. I should have named Yessica "Betty" to match lol. b) Alex's "favorite hobby" is kissin' Magnus.  
> If you guys really like the way I write these two, please let me know! I might be able to crank something out really quick for Valentine's Day (no promises). As always, I appreciate comments soooo much.  
> Take care of yourselves!


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